Rice and pasta combination products, and especially quick-cooking, dried rice and pasta combination products are popular with consumers. This popularity may be attributed to a number of features of these products, including their flavor, convenience, storage stability, ease of preparation, and nutritional properties. Undoubtedly, of these features, flavor is an important element of the popularity of these products, since it is doubtful that most consumers would purchase these products if they had poor taste, no matter how convenient or nutritional. Thus, it is desirable to make these products as flavorful as possible.
Typically these rice and pasta combinations are flavored with herbs, spices, seasonings and other flavoring agents. For these products, it is desirable to have the flavoring agents distributed as uniformly as possible throughout the product, thereby providing a substantially uniform taste sensation to the consumer. This may be accomplished in a number of ways. For example, the flavoring agents can be pre-mixed in a pouch and included in the same package containing the rice and pasta mixture. The rice and pasta mixture can then be heated in boiling water, and the pre-mixed, packaged flavoring agents can be added to the boiling water. The water will act as a vehicle to provide a substantially uniform distribution of the seasoning on the rice and pasta substrate surfaces. A more convenient flavoring method would be to attach the flavoring agents directly to the surface of the rice and pasta. This would obviate the need for the additional step of separately adding the flavoring agents to the cooking medium of the rice and pasta mixture.
However, there are problems associated with the production of rice and pasta combination products having the flavoring agents attached directly to the rice and pasta surfaces. One particular problem is attaching the flavoring agents so only minimal separation from the surfaces occurs during processing, packaging, shipping and handling. Another problem is obtaining a substantially uniform distribution of the flavoring agents on the rice and pasta surfaces. Furthermore, while there are methods of attaching flavoring agents to the surfaces of both the rice and pasta, albeit individually, such methods typically involve the use of fats and/or oils as an attachment aid. This use of fats and/or oils during processing is potentially undesirable for a number of reasons, including the greater health risks of fats and oils as compared to water and the generally recognized unhealthful aspects of such fats and oils when included in products such as those prepared in accordance with the present invention.
The present invention obviates these problems in that it provides an improved method of preparing a rice and pasta combination product enrobed with flavoring agents, including seasonings, herbs and spices, wherein the attachment of the flavoring agents to the product surface is facilitated by water instead of oil or fat, wherein the flavoring agents are attached substantially uniformly to the rice and pasta surfaces, and wherein there is only minimal separation of the flavoring agents from the rice and pasta surfaces.